good object upon which to practise, for Roman and Goth, Moor and
Christian, have combined to make its tortuous streets well-nigh
incomprehensible to the traveller's mind.

Here Conyngham wandered, or else he sat somnolently on a seat in the
Paseo del Gran Capitan in the shade of the orange trees, awaiting
the arrival of Concepcion Vara. He made a few acquaintances, as
every traveller who is not a bear must needs do in a country where
politeness and hospitality and a grave good fellowship are the
natural habit of high and low alike. A bullfighter or two, who
beguiled the long winter months, when the rings are closed, by a
little innocent horse dealing, joined him quietly in the streets and
offered him a horse--as between gentlemen of undoubted honour--at a
price much below the current value. Or it was perhaps a beggar who
came to him on the old yellow marble seat under the orange trees,
and chatted affably about his business as being bad in these times
of war. Once, indeed, it was a white-haired gentleman, who spoke in
English, and asked some very natural questions as to the affairs
that brought an Englishman to the town of Cordova. This sweet-
spoken old man explained that strangers would do well to avoid all
questions of politics and religion, which he classed together in one
dangerous whole. Nevertheless, Conyngham thought that he perceived
his ancient friend the same evening hurrying up the steps of the
Jesuit College of La Campania.

Two days elapsed and Concepcion Vara made neither appearance nor
sign. On the second evening Conyngham decided to go on alone,
prosecuting his journey through the sparsely populated valley of the
Alcadia to Ciudad Real, Toledo, and Madrid.